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| Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Equals-to-the-Apostles and Teachers of the Slavs. (Sofia, Bulgaria) |
A friend and I have been having ongoing discussions on the state of Orthodox Christianity in America for a while. One of the recurring and most controversial topics within this is liturgical languages.
Orthodoxy has a great tradition of incorporating the native language of a people that has been missionized into the life of the Local Church. For example, translations were made of the Divine Liturgy and various other works into Chinese in the 19th century. St. Nicholas of Japan single-handedly translated these same texts as well as the Gospels into Japanese. Going even further back in church history, Sts. Cyril and Methodius created an alphabet for the Slavic peoples so that the divine services could be held in their own languages.
My friend and I both live in the United States. It would make sense if the liturgical language of our country is the same as the one that is spoken by the vast majority of the population - English. Sadly, this is not the case. While the Antiochian Self-Ruled Archiodecese and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) hold their services almost exclusively in English, there are other jurisdictions which do not use English at all or only make grudging concessions to its usage.
Let's use St. George Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anytown, USA, as an example of what happens in some places. St. George was established in the 1930s by a group of White emigres and has been under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) ever since. If you go to St. George's website and pull up a church schedule, you will see that all of the services are conducted in Church Slavonic (the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church) on a weekly basis. This is all good fine and if you're a Russian, Serb, or Bulgarian, but what if you're not.
You peruse the schedule again. What do you see? Before every Slavonic service on Sunday, there is an English service that is served by a separate group of clergy with American sounding names. However, this Liturgy is at 7:30 in the morning whereas the Slavonic is at 10:00 am. So, which one do you attend? Do you sacrifice a language that is familiar to you for one that you've never heard? Do you sacrifice a service that you can follow for one you can't? That's up to you.
St. George Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Anytown is an example of a parish that tries to balance English and Church Slavonic by having two Liturgies every Sunday. One for the converts, one for the numerically superior Russians. (I use the term Russian to include Belorussians, Ukrainians, and other people from the former Soviet Union who speak the language.) If the parish has enough clergy, the schedule works fairly well. When the Metropolitan comes, the two Sunday services are combined into one.
There are other places, however, where having two Liturgies every Sunday in English and Church Slavonic simply doesn't work. Sometimes, the English scheduled once a month on the fourth Sunday. Sometimes, the Liturgy is half in English and Church Slavonic. Sometimes, the English Liturgy is served in a separate space like a chapel. Sometimes, there's no English in the liturgy at all.
Some people might say that Church Slavonic makes sense because they understand it. All right, but not everybody understands it. There are Russians who do not comprehend and need a prayer book written in both Russian and Church Slavonic in order to understand it. Your average American doesn't know anything about the language at all and a Liturgy served in Church Slavonic can be a major turn off to an inquirer who thought for some reason that the services were in English.
Another drum that people like to beat is that Church Slavonic is the traditional language of the Church. Maybe in Russia, but it wasn't the traditional language of the Church at the very beginning. The very first services were done in Aramaic and Greek. Only after Sts. Cyril and Methodius translated the service did Slavonic become the standard liturgical language of the Slavs.
Some people might say that it is necessary to keep the Church Slavonic for immigrants who come from the old country. This make sense, but how many new parishioners does your typical suburban parish get from Izhevsk and Bakchisaray every year? Not that many, probably. Don't get me wrong Church Slavonic can still be used, but it shouldn't be the main language of the services if 75% of the parish doesn't understand it.
Of course, there are other objections that can be raised here. In my opinion, however, the only way that the Orthodox Church in this country will grow is if English is the main language of the services. It is the language most of us speak. It is the language in which signs are written. It also makes historical sense. If Sts. Cyril and Methodius were sent to evangelize the United States today, they wouldn't do it in Greek. They would do it in English.
